African-American women
leaders gathered on Capitol Hill Tuesday in defense of Congresswoman
Ilhan Omar, one of the first two Muslim congresswomen in history and the
first member of Congress to wear a hijab. Omar has been the target of
numerous right-wing attacks since taking office, including by President
Donald Trump himself. Omar says death threats against her have spiked in
number since President Trump tweeted a video juxtaposing her image with
footage of the 9/11 attacks. Congresswomen Ayanna Pressley and Rashida
Tlaib, civil rights icon Angela Davis and others addressed the crowd
Tuesday to urge Congress to censure President Trump—to whom they
referred simply as the “occupant of the White House”—for his attacks on
Omar and to send a message to both political parties: “Hands off Ilhan
Omar!”

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!
I’m Amy Goodman. African-American women leaders gathered on Capitol
Hill Tuesday in defense of Congressmember Ilhan Omar, one of the first
two Muslim congresswomen in history, the first member of Congress to
wear a hijab. Omar has been the target of numerous right-wing attacks
since taking office, including by President Donald Trump himself. Omar
says death threats against her have spiked in number since President
Trump tweeted a video juxtaposing her image with footage of the 9/11
attacks. Congresswomen Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, civil rights
icon Angela Davis and others addressed the crowd Tuesday to urge
Congress to censure President Trump—who they referred to simply as “the
occupant of the White House”—for his attacks on Omar and to send a
message to both political parties: “Hands off Ilhan Omar!” This is
Congressmember Ayanna Pressley.

REP. AYANNA PRESSLEY:
I had to come here to lend my voice and solidarity. Yeah, I happen to
be a congresswoman, but before all the commas and titles, I’m a black
woman. And Ilhan is my sister. … I am changing the things I can no
longer accept. And from R. Kelly to Donald Trump, what we can no longer
accept is the silencing of black women! This is a reckoning. This is us
assuming our rightful place as the table shakers, as the truth tellers,
as the justice seekers, as the preservers of democracy. We are demanding
that you trust black women, that you see black women, that you believe
black women and honor us for the role that we have played as healers and
preservers of this democracy and this nation!

THENJIWE McHARRIS: Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib.

REP. RASHIDA TLAIB:
You know, I grew up in the most beautiful, blackest city in the
country, in the city of Detroit. And many—and many of my teachers, my
mothers on the block, all of them accepted me as a Palestinian woman, as
a woman that understands through the lens of my ancestors, through the
lens of my living grandmother in the West Bank, in the Occupied
Territories of Philistine. They knew what I meant when I talked about
the pain of oppression or the pain of feeling less than.

And I remember Ilhan saying that to me once, like, “You know,
Rashida, I was born in a community where I was the majority, but you
were born in a country where you felt like you were second-class
immediately when you were born, right?” And this is a woman that speaks
that way, that is raw, that is real. And I cannot stand that they
continue to police her, they continue to police our words, they continue
to police our positions. But I say hands off. Hands off of the women of
color that serve in the United States Congress. Not only—not only do we
look differently, but we serve and we fight differently. And it also
means that we talk differently. It’s also that we are allowed to be
angry in this country.

THENJIWE McHARRIS: Angela Davis.

ANGELA DAVIS:
It is about time that we stepped up to defend those who represent our
political vision on the front lines of struggle. I feel particularly
motivated to join this amazing group, because the attack against
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, while it is clearly directed at her as an
individual, is also designed to dissuade all of us from speaking out on
issues that are considered controversial. The attacks on her emanating
from the occupant’s Twitter feed—that’s right, the occupant’s Twitter
feed—and the numerous threats of assassination from white nationalists
and their supporters are a way of sending messages to other black women,
to all who hold radical and progressive political views, that they,
too, can be made into targets of vitriolic, violent racism: “Be quiet,
or you will suffer the fate of Ilhan Omar.” That is the message. But we
do not heed that message. We refuse to be quiet.

AMY GOODMAN:
Human rights leader, scholar, professor Angela Davis, speaking in
defense of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who has repeatedly been accused of
being anti-Semitic for criticizing the power of AIPAC
and the Israeli lobby in Washington and questioning U.S.-Israeli
relations. Despite the threats, she has refused to be silent and has
continued to speak out against racism, against Islamophobia, against
anti-Semitism and right-wing violence.

Ilhan Omar, I wanted to ask you about, well, one of the many comments
was Traci Backmon, Reverend Blackmon, saying that Islamophobia and
anti-Semitism grow from the same tree, that they are different branches
of the same hate. Can you talk about this?

REP. ILHAN OMAR:
Yeah. I mean, I referenced it as being of this—you know, the two sides
of the same bigoted coin. We know that many of the people who are
targeting the Jewish community for anti-Semitism are also targeting the
Muslim community in Islamophobia. And so, we have to collectively work
together to uplift our voices and say no to hate. We know that both of
our communities here in the United States are targeted by white
supremacists, and we know that the conservatives sort of are doing
everything that they can to distance themselves, to disinform the public
about the monsters that they helped feed, that are now causing
devastation in mosques and in synagogues. And if we are not collectively
wising up to that reality, then we will suffer the pain of it.

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